Heero
by wsprsndadrk
Summary: My vision is no longer clear. How long has it been since I've been able to blink? My brain is stretching, fighting to bend in ways in which it was not meant to bend. I know finally that I am breaking. Am I falling? Or am I still locked in place? My tortured soul abruptly stops stretching just short of snapping. I know he is here.


I am forced into a stillness so unwavering I can feel time settle on my shoulders like dust. It mocks me with false sympathy, and grips me with cruel and greedy attention. It is a moment before the breath leaves me in exhausted liberation. I wasn't aware I had even been holding it.

All around me, all is peaceful.

It feels as though everything is sleeping. Tranquil and soothing, motionless and… Still.

I hate it.

I have a storm tossing my emotions in fierce gales within me, and I can do nothing. I can say nothing. All I am able to do is let the battle rage. Silent. Serene. Yet I am screaming. I am bleeding from every thread of my tortured soul. And still I remain frozen in place. I can only stand here. Lifeless. Unmoving. I am dying. But I am hushed. I am still.

I will not bring myself to speak. I would condemn myself to Hell just to say one word! But I have no words. There is no translation for the way I feel. And for him, I'd not say them had I the words to express. So I suffer quietly. Utterly.

It would wound him too much to ask him to stay when we both know that he cannot. I would endure Hell alone, but I would not bring him any more than he has already known. That is why I must not allow him awareness. I must not let him know I would rather die eternally as I am now than to see him go. He would not be able to change what he must do – that he might not come back. And I will not see him suffer any regret by my hand before he leaves. Any hesitation in his heart will promise his demise. And so silently, I scream. And alone, I remain still.

I cannot bear the indolence any longer. Though I feel that I am breaking something fragile, I tear through the calm and move my fingers over the cold glass of the window. I unconsciously finger the heart-shaped locket that hangs from my neck, and contemplate the quiet peace of the Sanctuary below. It is overwhelming. Fitting.. But it does not provide refuge as the name implies. Rather it amplifies the stillness somehow, and wars with my sorrow. Both collide somewhere deep within me, and the flood overtakes me with a chilled, tender numbness.

I know what he must do. So I will be strong, for him. I will not give in to his piercing eyes. I will not let him feel my pain.

I give in to defeat and let calm take me. I feel weak. Frail. My heart is accepting the devastation, and the submission threatens to shatter me. How strange and distant I feel. It seems as though my mind has fragmented to a part that has died already, and a part that is feeling everything like it was a dream on the path of forgetfulness – a kind of dream that exists between wakefulness and sleep where thoughts float within the realms of wispy translucence. I do not feel like I am breaking. That would mean I was real and tangible. Able to break. I feel like a misplaced and almost forgotten fairy tale from some other time. One that somehow has found a place to exist for but a moment before receding back into fable.

Am I going crazy? I would laugh, but I have frozen in place once more as the image of a shocked, wide-eyed, half-hysterical expression appears on a face so like mine, choking the breath from a body too delicate to withstand so much. Is that what I have become? I can _almost_ feel it, but I am the reflection trapped within the glass. Not the paralyzed girl staring open-mouthed and wraith-like into the smooth surface, bearing her dying soul to a heartless night. My detached limbs work without realization, and slowly my arms are lifted from my sides. The fingers of each hand kiss my cheeks lightly. I watch as the phantom in the window mimics my movements. Yes. The face is mine, and it is as the reflection betrays. How must I feel to have such a face?

My vision is no longer clear. How long has it been since I've been able to blink? My brain is stretching, fighting to bend in ways in which it was not meant to bend. I know finally that I am breaking. Am I falling? Or am I still locked in place?

My tortured soul abruptly stops stretching just short of snapping.

I know he is here.

Icy awareness thunders through every corner of my brain, scorching all that it touches. I feel as though I have just landed on an expanse of flat, storm-less sea water after a fall too high to be measured. Slowly sinking back into consciousness, I am swallowed by a lethal and uninvited reality. My mind hurts. It's caving in. Cracking. But, I turn around. I have no choice.

My face is kept downcast so that I will betray nothing. I can only hope the light from the window behind me will hide my eyes within the shadow of silhouette.

You've never needed the light to see me, though.

I am afraid. Of you, of what I must not let you see, of what you will see. I cannot look at you! But reason fails and instinct shrieks like a ripping pain, searing through me until, outside of my control or knowledge, I look at you. Into your waiting eyes.

My Heero.

Why do your eyes haunt me so? They pierce into my skull and rape my emotions. How I long to crumple to the floor sobbing my love for you! How I wish for your eyes to grip me forever in their steely, unwavering strength! Would I live for more than a moment held tightly under their weight? **Yes.** Yes… For I would find what it is they search for. I would lose myself within them and swim until I understood what they crave, and grant that wish. I would soothe the horrors they have seen and melt the frozen hatred that I see locked inside. I would take away the cold and efficient mercilessness you possess when you squeeze the life out of innumerable souls…

That is why I cannot allow myself to be lost to you. To your eyes. You need your pain to do the things you must. How I hate war for exacting such a price! But as much as it hurts you, and as much as I hate it for tearing you apart, I understand the way you _feel_, if not how you fight. Do you understand me? Do you understand why I cannot bear wars? That I cannot stand to see you, and those like you suffer? Do you? And I wonder, can those you kill see your hollow and tortured gaze _begging_ for release as you spill their blood? Do they forgive you their murder when they see in your gaze that you hate wars as much as I? Do you allow yourself to see the plea for forgiveness in theirs? Do you forgive them? Do you forgive yourself? Or are you so conditioned to kill that you have no awareness that there is a soul you are stealing? That the soul you steal is your own?

Have you ever had regret in your eyes? Or love?

I cannot bear to see the burden in their depths. The confusion I see there rips at my heart and I cannot deny you any longer. I walk over to you.

What is this dread I see inside you? Can you ever know? Why do you seem wary when I am near? You fear nothing, but are you frightened of _me_, Heero? Do you fear what I represent? Do you fear because you could not kill me when you should have? Why didn't you kill me? You _should have_ killed me, Heero. Then it wouldn't be necessary for you to fight between the peace you want to _have_ and the peace you were trained to die for. That is why you fear me, isn't it? I represent – No... I AM the face of a peace you thought you could never have. I am the symbol of peace made flesh and blood! One who looks upon you, knows you for who and what you are, and still I reach out my hand to take yours. I am the symbol you fight for. But I am also the symbol you believe is exempt you. You wish it that way because you are afraid that I would forgive you. You are afraid because I am capable of giving you something you thought you would never know. Something you are terrified of knowing because it would change you. Why you fight. Why you kill. How you hope.

Four chances you had, Heero. And you promised me you would. But instead, you protected me. You should have protected yourself, Heero, and let me die.

Is that what haunts me? The fact that you could not kill me? Or is it the way you are looking at me now? The fear and the longing.. Is that.. is that _love_ I see, Heero? For _me_? No! I…I must be weak from standing so near to you. That look. It must be for your symbol.

God's grace I can only hope it is for the symbol.

I escape the prison of your stare and look down. Away from your gaze, I remember to breathe. Pulling strength that would only surface for you – _because_ of you, I try to recall my fear and my anger. You broke your promise to me and left the Sanc Kingdom without telling me. You went to Luxemburg to fight. And to die? Probably. Quatre told me you went to protect my kingdom and my ideals. To protect ME. All I heard was that you left without saying goodbye. That I might not ever see you again. Why, Heero? Were you running away from me? Trying to escape the way you are looking at me still? You never could separate the symbol from the woman.

I might not be able to see you, but I can feel the hot coals of your eyes burning my skin where they touch. And I can feel you holding your breath. How did we come to stand so closely? I can smell the gun powder and the smelt from welding gundanium alloy on your clothes. I can smell the musky scent of what is uniquely you beneath it.

My Heero.

How can I be afraid when you are so near? How can I be angry? It was my fault. I should have never made you promise to tell me before leaving. It would have been less difficult for you. But you are here now, out of guilt, out of duty.. I don't know. How selfish I am. How naive.

I look into your eyes again, searching your face for answers. Like you taught me. I expect to find nothing, but you surprise me by speaking.

"I should have killed you."

It was hushed, but I heard the tenderness in your voice. And I can feel the gentle sadness behind your words lingering in the air, not needing words at all to be heard or understood.

Forgive me of what I must do, but it is for you that I must pretend. I can't let you know how much you mean to me. Better for you to think me angry. That way, it will be easier for you to leave me. Again, I rally my strength. I am exhausted from my wind sheared emotions to hold myself too much longer. Now - or never.

"Then you and Quatre would not have found asylum in my kingdom, would have you? Certainly not from anywhere else considering the five of you are now rebels in the eyes of every Earth _and_ Colony faction. I'm sure my brother, Milliardo, would welcome you - wherever he is. No. The Sanc Kingdom is the only place that will have you, and the reason for that is based upon principle. If you want me dead, at least wait until I have an heir. Then you can kill me. You can even kill me twice. "

I'm not sure, but before I turned away – ran away – from the incredibly severe look you are bathing me in, I think I saw surprise and.. and something.. soft.. dance across your irises. But if there was such a look, it was quickly replaced by your impenetrable slate stare. Did I imagine it? I don't know. You can be so stoic. Unemotional. Detached. You always were good at hiding, Heero.

My Heero.

I retreat to stand near the bed. I don't have the strength to resist you any longer, though I must. I can NOT allow you to know how I feel. I fear I cannot turn away from you, either. I try, but I have frozen again. All I can do is clench my eyes tightly shut. If I close them hard enough, maybe I won't be able to sense you leave. Maybe the image you have burned into my retinas will be squeezed hard enough to evaporate through the back of my skull. Maybe my soul will break so quietly the husk of my body will stand long enough for you to walk away. So you won't see me crumple and drift into dust on the floor. If I press my lids together tightly enough, maybe I'll constrict the memory of you out of my brain. I will die, but at least you will be able to go where you have to go without burden. Without regret. Without hesitation.

But instead of the silence in a room empty of you, as I expected, I feel your warm lips against mine. Tasting my misery and drinking away the pain. I feel your soft tongue, shy at first, gain urgency and break through my parted lips to bring me into a kiss that would empty the sea of turmoil.

I don't dare open my eyelids, and fight to keep them closed. I tell myself I don't need to see you to know you are real. Instead, my arms find their way around you – to keep me on my feet or to keep you near, I don't know. I can feel myself melt into you, give into you, swim in the haze that rises with the sun on a dew-kissed mountain side after a frozen storm-tossed night. But my mind. For once, I find my mind clear and free of shadow. I can live in this moment for eternity and still remain oddly focused on the things moving outside of it. I feel so strange. I am aware of everything so acutely.. the way the curtains separate into a fold from where I stood gazing out of the window so lost and alone before you came. The light from the moon bathing the glass of the window, and shining in the room in awkward and delightful angles, playing with the dust in eccentric, geometric patterns. How the door you walked through stands solidly in the darkness, protecting us from the confusion beyond it through a seemingly impenetrable barrier. How the bed sheets are flawless and inviting, waiting to coax a love story in its warm embrace. The way the carpet muffles the sounds of our feet and makes it feel as though I were floating above the floor. How your heart pounds so fiercely I can feel the vibrations moving the material of my dress. How your hair softly tickles my eyelashes and my face with small kisses of it's own. How your fingers twine around me, pulling me in gently and more desperately as though you were trying to lift me and breathe me in. The way your nose brushes against my cheek as your lips hungrily dip into mine time and time again as though I were a well. The warm smell of heat and passion from your body inciting a desire from inside me I have never known. The way your clothes wrap around you, hugging your perfection and the way they move around you like the air moves around you. The way I have come to exist as one with you in this timeless existence.

I feel you reach under my hair to encircle my waist, and move your hands gradually up to the clasp at my neck. My body squeals with zealous chills as they tear twisting lightning bolts up and down my spine. I feel you unzip my dress, slowly, and savor the feeling of cool air touch my hot skin. Your fingers tease me as the fabric parts, and again I am overwhelmed with chills as they pave electric paths throughout my body. I gasp into your open lips, and I feel you smile against my protest. You hold my trembling bottom lip between yours, and I finally find the courage to open my eyes and look at you. You are looking at me with hooded lids, and I can see fever deep inside the arctic blueness that has for so long caged me in longing. You are… beautiful. I see no war in your eyes. Is THIS the peace you wanted? It must be, for I do not see fear. Nor regret. Nor hesitation. Only acceptance is in your eyes. And yes.. even love.

You take your lips away, and I feel your breath tremble along with my heart. The dress falls slowly under your careful guidance, over my hips, and pools delicately around my feet on the floor. I feel as though my soul were standing before you, naked. I have no body to fall heavily into or to be hidden within. I will stand here silent and still, light and softly glowing, lost in the Heaven of your arms, until time remembers and sets us free.

You caress my hair before kissing the ends, and place the strands behind by ear. With delicate fingers, you stroke my cheek, cup my jaw, and nudge me gently towards the waiting covers with a movement of your eyes. As contact is broken between us, I lay myself on the pillows and wait for you. I'm not aware of any wish to move under the sheets, all I know is the phantom feel of your fingertips, and the distant awareness of weight being taken from me by the softness of the mattress.

I watch you. Your liquid movements appear to move to some musical rhythm no one else can hear. For a moment, I can see the dangerous predator in you, but I find anticipation in the discovery, and I am at ease. I never imagined a man could move so magnificently. You are so beautiful!

I am torn between wanting to touch your perfect body and wanting to watch you continue to undress. Your eyes dance over me with a heat I've never seen in them before. I find that I have been distracted by them, and was almost lost to the removal of your shirt. Warm love bubbles up from beneath my rib cage, and my body spasms with a silent chuckle. You are graceful even when pulling a shirt off from over your head. You sense my glee, and pause to glance at me. A small grin tugs at the corner of your mouth, and you toss the shirt to the floor beneath you. The moonlight hits the contours of your body, and you cease undress long enough for me to observe the majesty of your muscles. I feel my eyes begin to sting from unshed tears. How can anyone be so beautiful?

The breath catches in my throat and my lungs are aching for release. Your eyes shift from my form to address the buttons of your jeans. One by one, they come apart in your hands, and you pull the material over your hips. I close my eyes to stay the aching throb in my chest. Lowering my head, I try to regain control of my bursting heart. It hurts! It burns so! If I loved you any more, I fear death would find me this night. Painful, half gasps are forcing their way to my lips now, and it is only when I feel the shift of weight on the bed that I raise my head again. Although my chest remains constricted and feels as though it is crushing me, my breathing comes easier. I cannot yet trust my eyes – but I find that they are opening with a will all their own. You mesmerize me. I cry out softly, a timid moan that opens my lungs briefly once more – and the tears I have fought so hard to hide from you fill me and overflow. But I will not remove my eyes from yours. I can see you now, ALL of you. And you are crying, too. Maybe not on the outside, but I can sense it. I can see the soft shine under your eyelids. I can see the pain of longing and of love at last exploding through you, raging against everything you were taught to protect, but not possess. I can see the empty spaces where the old walls you were shown to raise and keep be torn down and replaced by floods of sweet calm, and acceptance of a new strength. A strength that comes from knowing you would do anything to keep these feelings you have fought so hard against. To keep _me_. You know you are changed. You know from this moment on, you can never be alone. When you die, you will hold ME, and not your anger. Not your confusion. Your soul has been redeemed by love, Heero.

My Heero.

You come to me and take my lips with yours once again. I feel the limitless power and lithe strength of your body over mine, and dive into the sensation. I arch my back and allow you to caress the hollow of my spine. You hook your fingers in the elastic lining of my panties, pulling them off slowly with gentle caresses. Your other hand strokes the naked skin of my stomach, and moves softly and slowly up to cup a breast over the satin fabric of my bra. From there, your fingers move underneath me to locate the clasp. I feel a twist, and I find the tightness in my chest is no longer there. Freed with a simple touch from you. I realize that I am holding on to you tightly, and I loosen my embrace to explore the mountains and planes of muscle on your back with my fingertips. I feel you shudder and hear you gasp with the contact, and smile against your lips. You smile back, and I close my eyes and deepen the kiss.

The weight shifts once again as you move to occupy the space you have created between my legs with a hand. You seem to change your mind, and place only half of your mass on me, the rest on the bed. It is now that I feel your fingers explore the burnt auburn-blond curls of hair, and part the warm folds of flesh to find the moistness below. My eyes open with mild surprise and you raise your head to look down at me. I see the look of wary curiosity and flushed excitement and desire in your features. Your fingers slow with an unspoken question, but I give you a shy smile and reach up to capture your lips with mine once more. Reluctantly, you continue your investigation, but too cautious and hesitant for me. I reach down with a hand, and guide you to my depths. I feel you tense as though you had a slight electric pulse go through you, but you recover and push into me gently. My muscles spasm slightly with the intrusion, and I break the kiss and hiss through clenched teeth. I clutch onto you and breathe a husky moan into your ear before taking it into my mouth and sucking gently. With renewed hunger, you press your mouth firmly to my jaw, stabbing me with heated kisses all along my neck and collarbone. Jagged breaths rip through my lungs. I can feel the beginning of a dull throb quivering like butterflies in my abdomen, and I arch my back again so that the sensation will spread. You bathe my flaming flesh in cool breaths and nibbles as one hand moves against my wetness, and the other explores my curves and valleys of heated skin, desperate to keep up with your lips and my building need.

What is this? What is this I am feeling? I take your face with my hands and tilt your head so that our eyes meet. They are burning. I could melt under that gaze, and I will. Just kiss me one more time and I will.

Eyes on mine, your fingers leave me, but I am not disappointed. You are above me again, moving to cover me, and I know that what was removed will be replaced. I distantly wonder if I should guide you, and without thought, I grab for you and help you find my warmth. You smile down at me, and I know I was right to help you. I watch as you half close your eyes, and tense, fighting to keep gentle control. I am not afraid, but I am anxious. I hold on to you, and feel as you push into me. I feel a strangled cry in the back of my throat and a tightness trying to withstand a pressure almost too strong for it. I try to relax and slow the beating of my heart, regulate the air to and from my lungs. You take in a shaky breath, hold it, and try to push in again. This time, I know what to expect, am ready for it, so I am able to open myself to you. As you enter, I feel an ache that spreads from the folds of skin where you are, to the base of my spine, up and around my gut, and all the way to my diaphragm. Almost before the pain registers, it has been dulled by the feeling of giddiness in a world saturated in white. As I adapt to the feeling of you, my vision returns to me. I am full, and my world is changed. You. You are my world. You are all I can see, all I smell. You are all around me, inside me. You are all I feel. I breathe for the first time in my life. I breathe you. I taste you. I hear you flutter within and all about me, whispering sweet life inside veins that have never felt blood pulse.

Heero.  
My Heero.

From behind hooded eyes, we float within the world we created together. You bury your head into my neck, and there, for the first time, you feel safe enough to whimper something into my ear. My name. With shocked limbs, I tighten myself around you, and thrust myself down over you, desperate to fill myself with as much of you I can. My eyes are tearing. My name. My skin burns where you touch me…you are scalding me! If I never survive this fire, may I smolder for eternity. My tears will wash away the pain and leave me with the embers. My name.

I feel your hot breaths on the skin of my shoulder, and feel the jolts of electricity with every jagged and raw groan that escapes your lips to caress my ear. You grab my hips with both of your hands, and lift half of me slightly so that you can thrust deeper inside. I try with some success to arc my back so that I can meet you, and with your head next to mine, throaty breaths in the hollow of my neck, I find that I can hold a good deal of my weight and yours with just my head and shoulder blades. I wrap my legs around you, and run my nails down your back.

I feel the sheets bunched beneath me, hot and sweaty as you lower me to the bed once again. Your movements seem more slow, more controlled, and you look into my eyes with clear and obvious love dancing within them. One of your hands finds its way to caress my cheek and play with the strands of my hair. As you kiss away my tears, you blow onto my fevered skin, and work your lips to my ear and pause there for a moment before saying my name again. With new, exaggerated slowness, you pull most of the way out of me and hesitate briefly before plunging into me as far as you can. Again and again. This time, I curve my back fully to meet you, close my eyes, and allow the building sensations of pulsating waves to course through me. I can distantly hear myself cry out gutturally through an open throat, but my awareness is focused on the heated throbbing that is threatening to overtake me. I feel light caresses all over my body, heightening the aching inside. I toss my head back and feel your mouth cover a swollen nipple and tease it with a hot, warm tongue. The thumb of one hand finds a sensitive spot on my hip, and you quickly press into the flesh forcing me to raise it to you with more urgency with your next thrust. Your mouth works its way up to my jaw, and you cover me with light kisses before you devour my lips with your own. I can feel my muscles begin to tremble forcefully, and my breaths are coming in gasps and pants. I'm getting dizzy now, and I can feel my consciousness ebbing and flowing. I dig my nails into you to keep hold, push myself as vigorously as I can down your length, draw in a ragged breath, and wait for.. something. I don't have to wait long. At last, I feel the explosion of a firewall of white rawness rip through me, lethal and merciless, leaving me exposed and violated in all that it touches. I never knew love could be so excruciating. I never knew love would be such ecstasy.

You tense for a moment as my form writhes beneath you, but your body recovers before you do, and buries itself into mine. One heave, then another, and you stop, paralyzed, holding yourself deep within me.. And then with a release of rugged breath, you withdraw and push into me once slowly, then twice, and I feel the warmth of your life flowing into me. I hold you, kissing your shoulders, your neck, anything I can reach - as the after shocks of whatever hit me ease with every push of life you give me. Finally, you stop, and tenderly lay yourself down atop me, breathing heavily. After a time, I thought you had fallen asleep, but you raise yourself just enough to capture my lips in one last kiss before releasing me. You stay inside me, and for a long time, we just look at each other. I've never felt such exhaustion. I've never felt such simple and complete bliss.

When you roll off of me and onto your back, I place my head on your shoulder and we sleep. For the first time in our lives, we sleep. All is as it should be, all is at peace.

You don't know that your movement woke me. Is it so close to sunrise already? Must you go? Can't you stay a little while longer? You must sense that I've awoken because you look at me. I can see you in the moonlight, but from where you are, you can't see if my eyes are open in the darkness.

You never needed the light to see me, though.

You look so.. sad.

My Heero.

I'm sorry.

I call your name and you jump. But then you relax. Maybe you think I'm dreaming? But I am not. I would not let you leave if I were dreaming. So, I call to you again and you come to me. So. You think I am asleep, but you don't know if you should give in to your heart once more. To comfort me when I know you have left my side - even from within my dreams. But you are coming to me now.

You brush the hair from my face; still unable to see my eyes are on you. You lean over to kiss my forehead, but I shift so that you meet my lips instead. I kiss you with all the passion of one who knows this could be the last, and you kiss back with equal desperation. When we part, I can see the combination of wide-eyed shock and cruel fairy-tale numbness on your face. Heero! I know that look, and my heart bleeds to see you a victim of it. It is the face of helpless defeat that the reflection on the glass showed me earlier. The mind-breaking feeling that your soul is being torn from life and you can do nothing to stop it. Well. I refuse to let you see that look on my face. I saw the image staring heartlessly back at me, mocking me for my loss, laughing that I was powerless and weak. I will not allow you to see that reflection, as well. I will be strong for you. I will show you hope. I will show you love. And though I am crying inside, I will smile for you. I will show you that I believe in you.

You suck in your breath harshly through clenched teeth, and blink loose a tear from each eye as you look at me. How I yearn to ask you to stay! But I cannot. I will not make it

more difficult for you. I wish… I wish I could….

Heero. I cannot ask you to stay, but maybe I can give you something to take with you..

"…"

You put your fingers to my lips, and a grin tugs at the corner of your lips.

"Ssssshhhh…"

So. You know how I feel, and that I have vowed not to tell you. Maybe you feel the same way. If it were said, you leaving would be impossible for us to bear. You would be distracted, become careless. Loose your life. No. You must be strong, so I must be. I know you will come back some day and we can say the words that are forbidden now. Instead, right now, our silence binds us to a pact. We _both_ must survive so we can profess our love aloud later. When it is safe. When I can call you My Heero and you can hold me until after daybreak. Quatre knows, he told you to come in here to say goodbye before he went to find his Gundam in the desert. The others likely know as well, but they will keep our secret. They will protect it – and us – with their lives. They are all heroes. My Heroes.

You watch me fall asleep and cradle me until my breathing becomes soft and even.

This time I don't feel you get up, and though my eyes are not yet open, I know you are gone when a flood of light penetrates my closed lids. Sitting up and looking at the sun-lit room, and a bed empty of you, I don't feel as empty as I believed I would. I unconsciously move to finger the locket that hangs from my neck to find it missing. I smile. Keep it for me, then. It will hang close to your heart and remind you of our night together, of what we discovered in each other's eyes, of me. We are apart now, but not really alone. We can never be alone. You have me locked in the walls of your heart and mind, and I have you inside me now, too. Heero.

My Heero.


End file.
